How to Double Your Freelance Income Today

Wouldn’t it be nice to make twice as much income as a freelancer?

I mean, without having to work twice as many hours; I’m sure I don’t speak for just myself when I say that but I had no intention of working longer hours when I started freelancing.

What’s so awesome about freelancing is that, unlike a brick-and-mortar business or any type of venture which requires physical capital and input, everything you sell as a freelancer comes with a $0 cost. Sure, there’s your laptop or design software and a few other nick-knacks, but basically you set your price at where you think your time and service is worth.

So if you’d like to double your freelance income, let’s go over a few basics on how to get there.

Double your rate, double your freelance income

The more you think about it, the more exciting it is: why not simply charge twice what you’re currently charging? There’s nothing wrong with adjusting your fee structure–in fact, I encourage you to do so, even if you think that your rates are fair where they’re at. If you always stick with charging $200 per blog post or $500 for a press release, you won’t know if people will be willing to pay $400 for the same blog post or $1,000 for a press release until you try. Value is subjective, after all.

One caveat to this is how to approach doubled rates with your current clients. I’m a big believer in loyalty, and especially with freelance work you never know when the well might run dry. Asking someone who you’ve been working with for a while to all of a sudden pay double might not only be financially unfeasible for them, it might also piss them off a little bit. On the other hand, if you’re in a position where you can afford to risk losing a client, it can’t hurt to tell them you’ll be doubling your rate–if you don’t need them badly enough, the best case is that they do and pay up. If you want to double your freelance income, doubling your rate is probably the most straightforward way to make that happen.

Ask your better paying clients for more work

Probably not all of your clients pay you the same rate. Some may have started working with you earlier when you charged less, or perhaps you agreed to hourly pay instead of fixed rates–there’s an endless debate about this, but I prefer fixed rates. In any case, ask your more deep-pocketed clients if they have any side projects they’re working on that they need help with, and key in for other opportunities for growth that may come along.

Start saying no

It can be hard to let go of loyal clients, even if they don’t pay you as much. The problem is that the more time you spend working for someone who only pays you $100 for a piece, you’ll have less time to devote towards working for someone who will pay double for the same amount of effort. If you’ve made it this far as a freelancer, you’re worth more than what people are paying you right now anyways.

Subcontract your work

Where appropriate, bring on someone else to complete tasks for you. There are plenty of people who can do almost as good a job as you but for less. Fiverr and upWork both offer an array of affordable and capable talent who can take care of creating first drafts of work for you. In the time that you would normally spend doing work yourself, you can hunt for bigger and better paying freelance projects. Just be sure to polish off work that subcontractors do to make sure that it matches your standards and that crucial details of the work–the little things such as writing style or color schemes–are very clearly yours.

Diversify your skillset

The problem with having one bread and butter trade is that it limits your potential to become the sort of master craftsperson capable of being the one-stop solution for a client’s needs. The solution to this problem is to train yourself in related disciplines to help you take on multiple facets of a project for a client, thus commanding more compensation. If you’re a programmer, train how to be a full-stack developer. If you’re a copywriter, learn how to build basic websites on platforms such as WordPress–that way your client will pay you the money they would pay someone else to build a website for them. If you’re a photographer, hone your graphic design skills so you can focus on delivering a variety of different types of images to clients.

Convert your service into a passive income product

If there’s one way to more than double your freelance income, it’s got to be this. If you can turn your service into an infinitely re-sellable product such as an ebook or online course, you might end up making more money just from passive income than you ever could by freelancing. If that sounds awesome to you, the great news is that we’ve got a great free class here to teach you just how to do that.

Nathan Mizrachi FOLLOW >

A few years ago Nathan Mizrachi quit his job and flew off to Europe, where--among other things--he walked the Camino de Santiago, fell in love in Paris, learned that Balkan winters are as bad as Boston ones, and was deported from the UK. He enjoys reading, cooking, and convincing people that not everyone needs to quit their job and travel the world. He also finds writing about himself in the third person to be slightly obnoxious.